Friday, April 27, 2012
Thursday, April 26, 2012
Tuesday, April 24, 2012
Name Changes, Tantric Sex, Cooling Systems, and Missed Stops: Korean Misadventure #1
Though I've been here for several days now, I feel the need to elaborate on my very first Korean misadventure. (Which did in fact begin before even leaving the States. Actually, come to think of it, the whole protracted story of my beating the odds and ending up here at all is kind of a misadventure. Were I a superstitious person whom fate showed signs, there is no way I ever would have made it, because I must say, everything from the timing of my Federal background check to the misspelling of my last name on my boarding pass proved an obstacle.)
The Many Mishaps that landed me in Suji, South Korea:
1. My employer misspelled my last name when booking my ticket, and apparently it wasn't able to be changed, so after spending 45 minutes in the middle of the night with a ticketing agent at the check-in counter in the Minneapolis airport, I held my breath and made it through security.
2. On my flight from Denver to San Francisco I sat next to a middle-aged Californian man reading a book entitled The Heart of Tantric Sex, which I can say with no hesitancy features very detailed illustrations. He then thought it appropriate to comment both to himself and to me on said illustrations. Needless to say, much of my time on this flight was spent either pretending to be asleep or reading my own book intently- both which were done with my ipod in.
3. My flight out of San Francisco was a misadventure in and of itself. After boarding the plane, and finding my seat next to a Korean guy close to my age, I realized I was horribly overdressed in my thin sweatshirt and jeans for a flight in a stuffy plane whose temperature was about 90 degrees and had no working AC. This hot hot situation was my first exposure to the Korean way of handling a not so ideal situation. While most Americans in this situation would likely begin to complain loudly and get frustrated, the guy next to me begin to fan himself using exaggerated hand gestures while giggling and saying "oh so hot hot hot! so hot! oh!" He was not alone. Soon I was giggling and smiling away about the heat and the absurdity of it along with those Koreans around me.
When we had been sitting on the plane for about 20 minutes, they made an announcement that there was a problem with the cooling system (no really?) and that we would all have to de-board the plane as it couldn't be flown as was. So de-board we did. The mechanics were able to fix it fairly quickly, but we were now 2 hours behind schedule. After once again boarding the plane (which though fixed, was still just as hot, as apparently the AC wouldn't kick in until the engine had started) and getting situated, we were delayed yet again by an overhead compartment that refused to close. Though that took the mechanic less than 5 minutes to fix, it took him 20 minute to actually get to the plane, delaying us further and resulting in more people shedding more clothes.
4. The 12 hour flight continued with out incident. The biggest incident was that the flight crew ran out of beer about 8 hours in. (Korean men know how to drink!) They were then relegated to finishing off the white wine and miniature plastic bottles of cheap whisky on ice. Woe is us. A long boring flight with no beer.
5. After landing in Incheon International Airport, I was met by my very dear friend Kyu-po, but there was no sign of my boss, Mr. Park. Apparently Mr. Park had the date of my arrival mixed up, and as such wasn't there to take me to my place. Kyu-po was exceptionally helpful in finding a bus to Suji (Suij is about 15 minutes outside of Seoul) and coming with me to meet my childhood friend Maddie, who is teaching at the same school I am. Unfortunately, we missed the Suji stop where Maddie was going to meet us, and ended up having to back track in a taxi which we took to a random street corner where we stood waiting for Maddie to meet us. I should add, throughout all of this it was raining buckets.
Conclusion: It was a long day (or 2?) or travel, but a lovely misadventure and quite a start to my time here. I'm exceptionally grateful to have friends here that I already know (Shout out to Kyu-po and Maddie... thanks again for straightening out the chaos), and looking forward to making more.
The Many Mishaps that landed me in Suji, South Korea:
1. My employer misspelled my last name when booking my ticket, and apparently it wasn't able to be changed, so after spending 45 minutes in the middle of the night with a ticketing agent at the check-in counter in the Minneapolis airport, I held my breath and made it through security.
2. On my flight from Denver to San Francisco I sat next to a middle-aged Californian man reading a book entitled The Heart of Tantric Sex, which I can say with no hesitancy features very detailed illustrations. He then thought it appropriate to comment both to himself and to me on said illustrations. Needless to say, much of my time on this flight was spent either pretending to be asleep or reading my own book intently- both which were done with my ipod in.
3. My flight out of San Francisco was a misadventure in and of itself. After boarding the plane, and finding my seat next to a Korean guy close to my age, I realized I was horribly overdressed in my thin sweatshirt and jeans for a flight in a stuffy plane whose temperature was about 90 degrees and had no working AC. This hot hot situation was my first exposure to the Korean way of handling a not so ideal situation. While most Americans in this situation would likely begin to complain loudly and get frustrated, the guy next to me begin to fan himself using exaggerated hand gestures while giggling and saying "oh so hot hot hot! so hot! oh!" He was not alone. Soon I was giggling and smiling away about the heat and the absurdity of it along with those Koreans around me.
When we had been sitting on the plane for about 20 minutes, they made an announcement that there was a problem with the cooling system (no really?) and that we would all have to de-board the plane as it couldn't be flown as was. So de-board we did. The mechanics were able to fix it fairly quickly, but we were now 2 hours behind schedule. After once again boarding the plane (which though fixed, was still just as hot, as apparently the AC wouldn't kick in until the engine had started) and getting situated, we were delayed yet again by an overhead compartment that refused to close. Though that took the mechanic less than 5 minutes to fix, it took him 20 minute to actually get to the plane, delaying us further and resulting in more people shedding more clothes.
4. The 12 hour flight continued with out incident. The biggest incident was that the flight crew ran out of beer about 8 hours in. (Korean men know how to drink!) They were then relegated to finishing off the white wine and miniature plastic bottles of cheap whisky on ice. Woe is us. A long boring flight with no beer.
5. After landing in Incheon International Airport, I was met by my very dear friend Kyu-po, but there was no sign of my boss, Mr. Park. Apparently Mr. Park had the date of my arrival mixed up, and as such wasn't there to take me to my place. Kyu-po was exceptionally helpful in finding a bus to Suji (Suij is about 15 minutes outside of Seoul) and coming with me to meet my childhood friend Maddie, who is teaching at the same school I am. Unfortunately, we missed the Suji stop where Maddie was going to meet us, and ended up having to back track in a taxi which we took to a random street corner where we stood waiting for Maddie to meet us. I should add, throughout all of this it was raining buckets.
Conclusion: It was a long day (or 2?) or travel, but a lovely misadventure and quite a start to my time here. I'm exceptionally grateful to have friends here that I already know (Shout out to Kyu-po and Maddie... thanks again for straightening out the chaos), and looking forward to making more.
South Korea: The Next Big Adventure
After a rather long hiatus, I'm back with an update on my latest adventure: South Korea. As those of you who looked at my tumblr blog from my time in the Middle East know, I went back and forth with this decision for quite a while. Originally, I had been planning on coming to South Korea last August...and then it was this past February...and now here it is April, and I am (finally) here. I really needed to think about why I was planning to go to South Korea and if it was the right thing for me to be doing at this point. One of the biggest dilemmas for me was intellectual: do I really believe that I am qualified to, and should be, teaching English in South Korea? Not exactly. I am in no way qualified to teach in the United States, so what makes my teaching in a foreign country not only permissible, but dare I say desired? I have no interest in being a teacher- I never have. Kids drive me nuts. Don't get me wrong, I have strong opinions regarding the education system in the United States, and a tendency to read about it for pleasure (I watch movies like The Lottery for fun, and read education blogs, and articles in my free time) which, I blame on my Mama and her inability to separate work and home. (Anecdotes about little kids being naughty, sneaky, inquisitive, compassionate, and downright hilarious paired with equal parts ranting and bafflement at the absurdity of education policy comprises the majority of dinner table talk at my house.)
That said, as much as kids drive me nuts, I love them. The most fulfilling job that I have ever had was taking middle and high school girls backpacking for the first time. And while I am perhaps not as outwardly passionate about the English language as I am about backpacking, I am passionate about the value of a second language, so having the opportunity to help kids become fluent in English while at the same time learning about Korea from them is pretty hard to pass up. And while I think that the ideal way of learning a language is finding yourself entirely immersed in it through living somewhere that it is spoken, short of that, the next best thing in a classroom setting is hearing it from a native speaker and being forced to use it to communicate and converse with them. Had my high school Spanish teacher been a native speaker, not only would she might actually have taught us something, but she certainly wouldn't have taught us that ello was the word for he/him. (It's el...not ello). I could go into much greater depth with my pondering about the meaning of my being here, but I suppose when it comes down to it the short of it is that I'm here, I will be here for at least the next year, and qualified or not I'm going to spend hours of my day teaching Korean students English. And so it begins- my next great adventure.
That said, as much as kids drive me nuts, I love them. The most fulfilling job that I have ever had was taking middle and high school girls backpacking for the first time. And while I am perhaps not as outwardly passionate about the English language as I am about backpacking, I am passionate about the value of a second language, so having the opportunity to help kids become fluent in English while at the same time learning about Korea from them is pretty hard to pass up. And while I think that the ideal way of learning a language is finding yourself entirely immersed in it through living somewhere that it is spoken, short of that, the next best thing in a classroom setting is hearing it from a native speaker and being forced to use it to communicate and converse with them. Had my high school Spanish teacher been a native speaker, not only would she might actually have taught us something, but she certainly wouldn't have taught us that ello was the word for he/him. (It's el...not ello). I could go into much greater depth with my pondering about the meaning of my being here, but I suppose when it comes down to it the short of it is that I'm here, I will be here for at least the next year, and qualified or not I'm going to spend hours of my day teaching Korean students English. And so it begins- my next great adventure.
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